Position of Wikimedia Spain about URAA - Wikimedia-l

19 Feb 2014

Hello. Wikimedia Spain members wrote an open letter to BoT where we show
our position about the URAA and we support Wikimedia Israel. The letter
says:

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We, the members of Wikimedia España, the chapter of the Wikimedia movement
in Spain, support the concerns expressed by our fellow Wikimedia Israel
and other places around the World about the legal norm known as URAA. That
norm, based on the legal status quo, has the effect of extending the
copyright of cultural works for periods even longer than those already in
force.

We do not object in any way to the right of people to live out of the
results of their work, be it in manufacturing, service industries,
agriculture or any other human activity, but those works form the core of
culture as the sum of human knowledge, and their use by all Mankind has to
be protected too. While it is entirely understandable that painters,
writers or photographers have the right to sustain themselves with their
works, it is not reasonable that people who did not author anything should
be allowed to make money out of the works of people who died fifty,
seventy-five or even hundred years before.

Furthermore it has to be taken into account that under the excuse of
protecting the authors' rights, an unduly burden has been charged on the
users of works of unknown authors, anonymous works or the ones of people
who simply did not intend to claim any right at any time at all. The
Uruguay Round Agreements were negotiated by 123 countries. Somebody who
came across some anonymous work that could be dated at anytime in the last
century, could be required to find a negotiator among the more than seven
billion people on Earth, since, otherwise, he/she could be violating some
state copyright law.

Another aspect that URAA does not pay attention to is the fact that many
works remain unattended. When talking about books, it means that they are
not reprinted and are not available anymore. But it does not mean that
somebody could just reprint them in order to make them known to the
public. In that way people can neither buy copies of works nor make them
themselves. Who is profiting by that? In other cases, photographs,
pictures, rolls of film, etc., just sit rotting -literally in some cases-
in storerooms, not only forgotten, also forbidden. Is there any benefit
from it?

So, in spite of all legal terms, we, the Wikimedians from Spain, support
not just our Israeli companions, but the right of all the Human Race to
have a chance to enjoy what has been done by authors. And so we expect the
Wikimedia Foundation, as a provider of free knowledge sources, will do
their best and fight for the shortest copyright terms possible, restricted
as closely as possible to the author's lifetime.

Yours sincerely,

Wikimedia Spain

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*Wikimedia España Blog

http://blog.wikimedia.es/2014/02/postura-de-wikimedia-espana-sobre-la.html

*On Meta in different languages:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Espa%C3%B1a/Letter_to_the_BoT_reg…

We encourage you to create a debate about it and work for free knowledge.

Thank you and regards

-- 
Santiago Navarro
Wikimedia España
http://www.wikimedia.org.es/